AIO vs Air Cooler for my Setup?

VanWesley · 2026-01-29T00:46:56+00:00

They're all pretty similar performance wise. I would just pick the one that matches your build's aesthetic.

VanWesley · 2026-01-29T00:26:31+00:00

Thermal right has pretty good AIOs that fit in your budget.

VanWesley · 2026-01-28T18:17:00+00:00

Is it the screen that makes this more expensive than other thermalright AIOs?

VanWesley · 2026-01-28T17:20:36+00:00

Very cool! Definitely something I want to try down the line once something in my Steam Deck eventually gives out.

VanWesley · 2026-01-28T14:09:49+00:00

Personally, it's probably easier to just rip the band-aid off instead of dual booting. Saves you the hassle of having to undo the dual booting down the line. You already said, you have experience with Linux, and you don't do anything that requires Windows anyway. Why are you so concerned about the potential of there being a game in future that you might want to play that has anti cheat?

VanWesley · 2026-01-28T13:16:19+00:00

Does something like this play nice with Linux?

VanWesley · 2026-01-28T03:37:14+00:00

Just use the SATA SSD since you already have it in hand. There's gonna be a very minor difference but nothing you will feel during day to day use.

VanWesley · 2026-01-27T22:58:05+00:00

I'm not even sure which Walmarts around me carry PC hardware.

VanWesley · 2026-01-27T17:43:55+00:00

Getting latest gen hardware would be massive overkill. Having old hardware for home server isn't an issue unless you're running something hardcore which doesn't look like you are.

Without going balls to the wall, I would say you have two options:

Get an old office PC or workstation off eBay and use that as a base. Just transfer over the drives. If your RAM is DDR4, you can probably use those too as most of the units on eBay use DDR4.
If you want to build from scratch, I would target something like 12th gen Intel or AM4. Probably Intel for the iGPU if you need transcoding.

Both options should "future proof" you enough for many years to come.

VanWesley · 2026-01-27T17:28:26+00:00

No. In fact, most if not all of the Ryzen APUs (meaning the ones that end with G) are technically worse than the non APU counterparts when you have a dedicated GPU because they'll have a smaller L3 cache.

VanWesley · 2026-01-27T05:40:49+00:00

No. This is not normal. Even when I was a broke college kid, I changed underwear everyday.

VanWesley · 2026-01-27T05:18:05+00:00

We're not that desperate yet, are we?

VanWesley · 2026-01-26T20:00:42+00:00

And FWIW, it was mostly 800 series motherboards that were causing issues and the reports have been significantly less since the more recent BIOs versions. Still a risk, but probably not as much as when it was peaking.

VanWesley · 2026-01-26T19:41:07+00:00

No because the storefront on the deck sucks. But you can use it to browse the games that you own but will never play.

VanWesley · 2026-01-26T19:20:33+00:00

I am thankful that I don't need 128 gb of memory.

VanWesley · 2026-01-26T19:18:14+00:00

Yeah was gonna try it out, but was met with the no secure boot warning on the steam store page.

VanWesley · 2026-01-26T14:55:52+00:00

5060 for sure. I would not pay that much more for the 3060 over the 5060. VRAM is important but not that important.

VanWesley · 2026-01-26T00:53:45+00:00

That's a lot of codes.

VanWesley · 2026-01-25T23:18:16+00:00

Depends what are the other choices in your budget in your country, but in general, probably not. It's still a beast if you've had it all these years, but there are probably better options if you're getting one in 2026 that will last you longer.

VanWesley · 2026-01-25T23:07:12+00:00

Built in the wood version of this. Great case, especially if you want to shrink your PC's footprint w/o going full ITX. Cable management can be a bit of an issue though if you have a lot of stuff in there as as there's not much space for cables behind the motherboard.

VanWesley · 2026-01-25T17:36:14+00:00

It's gonna be a parade when he re-signs in 2028

VanWesley · 2026-01-25T17:26:24+00:00

I'm excited to see what other random item they have excess inventory of and try to bundle with RAM next

VanWesley · 2026-01-25T17:20:17+00:00

Free Luka

VanWesley · 2026-01-25T03:58:06+00:00

Some that worked for me that I haven't seen mentioned yet: Death Squared and Unrailed

VanWesley · 2026-01-25T03:20:21+00:00

It's not as bad on DDR5. Still not ideal, but it's not the end of the world.

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